1. Field of the Invention
The invention generally relates to a system and method for an information vault and, more particularly, to a system and method for an information vault that provides management of mutually agreed upon access to information between advertisers and consumers.
2. Background Description
In today's world, there is a very weak connection between consumers and advertisers. Advertisers generally use a “shotgun” approach in their attempts to reach consumers and these customers are typically unqualified as potential buyers of the advertiser's goods and services. On the other hand, the customers on the receiving end are typically inundated with spam on email, a mailbox full of junk mail, or telemarketing calls at dinner time. Consumers have to sift through this “noise” to find an offer that may be beneficial to them; however, most people do not bother to consider these advertisements/solicitations.
Exemplary problems facing advertisers include, but are not limited to:                Difficulty finding interested consumers.        Difficulty finding qualified consumers.        Overcoming consumer hostility for the invasion of their privacy.        Getting their message recognized out of the general background advertising “noise.”        
Similarly, exemplary problems facing consumers include, but are not limited to:                Constant invasion of privacy by advertisers.        Not being able to distinguish legitimate offers of interest from “junk” offers.        Overhead of dealing with this “junk” advertising.As a consequence, matching qualified consumers with advertisers has an intrinsic value. Advertisers are often willing to pay for highly qualified consumers. In fact, advertisers very often do pay for information associated with qualified consumers. For example, advertisers frequently pay market research firms, middlemen who create targeted phone lists, or when banners are displayed on a web page. Unfortunately, none of this compensation paid by an advertiser ever goes to the actual target of the advertiser, i.e., the consumer. The consumer does not benefit financially from receiving the “message.” The consumer is rarely rewarded for letting the advertiser into their space. Other parties (e.g., middlemen, research firms, or the like) receive this benefit.        
Ultimately, information is valuable. The illicit use of information could cause a financial loss to the owner or confer an unfair advantage to another party. For example, organizations collect personal information and preferences and sell them on the open market as phone lists, market research, or the like. The individual who owns this information (i.e., the person themselves) never gets directly or indirectly compensated. Instead, the information compilers or middlemen essentially take an individual's information and sell the information. Not only does the individual not get compensated for the middlemen's and advertisers' use of the information but are also indiscriminately solicited or spammed as a result.
Typically, the current common solution involves each “second party”, i.e., the entities an individual may give personal information to, “to promise” via privacy policies that are long and difficult to read, to not compromise or sell information. It is common knowledge that these policies are then either ignored or having been slyly worded, the private personal information is shared with others. Or, the private information is merely stolen by outsiders or insiders at any of the thousands of entities that store personal information.
Examples of attempts to address information privacy issues include Microsoft® Corporation which has implemented a centralized, single sign on/authentication service called Passport® which may store your private information and provide it only to web sites that have agreed to certain privacy agreements. Microsoft® also has tried to implement Hailstorm®, a centralized storage system with charges for people to store their data. The Liberty Alliance project is another example effort to provide similar single sign on specifications that vendors may provide.
However, each of these implementations has not addressed allowing an owner of the information to control access to their data or their privacy and to enable value to flow to the owner of the personal information. Advertisers would be very much inclined to delivery information to consumers while honoring their privacy, if the advertisers were assured that their information would be viewed or consumed. One the other hand, consumers would likely be willing to provide their information if it were secured from dissemination or misuse and, in particular, if the consumer is rewarded for accepting or “consuming” the advertising.